Migrant bodies: Corporality, sexuality, and power among Mexican migrant men

Abstract

In this study, the authors explored the construction of embodiment among Mexican men who had experienced migration between Mexico and the United States—and between Mexico and California in particular. The body emerged as a basic, fundamental underpinning of the migratory experience and as a space in which relations of gender and power, identities, sexualities, and desire converged. The migrant men constructed the body in specific ways depending on the different contexts they inhabited. Based on these findings, the authors have detected 2 paradoxes that are essential to understanding the relationships among body, power, and sexuality in the context of gender relations for these men: a paradox manifesting as an estrangement from the body in relation to the migratory trajectory, and a paradox of identity resulting from the collapse of the gender and sexual orders in which the men had been educated.